Own Correspondent|Its no news that CAF stripped Cameroon of the 2019 AFCON rights and Egypt won the rights over South Africa in a landslide victory. Egypt won the 2019 mundial beating South Africa by 16 votes to one in a vote by the CAF executive committee members in Senegal on Tuesday.
Reports gathered from the outset shows that the North Africans bid was more coherent and had government approval while South Africa’s lacked the guarantees; the Egyptians desire to host African football’s showpiece event was evident. But Egypt FA boss, Hany Abu Rida, attributed his country’s victory in the election to government guarantee to CAF.
“I want to thank the CAF Executive Committee for the trust, and I thank the government for this support,” said Abu Rida, in an interview with BBC sports. We organised the tournament on 2006 and that make us against a challenge to make better and better, we are ready for this honour.
“The guarantee from government helped us to win against South Africa and that will help us to make a good tournament,” added Ahmed Shobair, vice-president of Egypt’s FA. “The fans will be back again in the stadiums, which will be full in the tournament I promise.” Original host nation Cameroon was stripped of staging duties in November because of slow preparations.
Egypt’s victory over South Africa became more interesting as Mohamed Salah was voted Africa’s best player for a second successive year on Tuesday, etching his name among the continent’s all-time greats. The Liverpool forward beat off competition from club teammate Sadio Mane of Senegal and Arsenal’s Gabonese striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang to win the award, having scooped it last year at the expense of the same duo.
He is the first Egyptian to be named Africa’s best player twice and the sixth in the continent to win back-to-back awards after Ghana’s Abedi Pele, Liberia’s George Weah, Senegal’s El Hadji Diouf, Cameroon’s Samuel Eto’o and Ivory Coast’s Yaya Toure.
Egypt has just six months to prepare for the expanded 24- team finals, which kick off in June. It will be the fifth time Egypt, which won the tournament when it last hosted in 2006, has staged the tournament. Eight stadiums will be used during the tournament, hosting in five different cities: Alexandria, Ismailia, Port Said, Suez and the capital Cairo.